I have started work on translating my father’s cousin’s manuscript. The work looks like an account of her experiences up to the end of the Second War. It is a German perspective. Written in 1981, it is one mediated by 35 years and of youth, as she was just a teenager when the war ended.
The translation work will be a long and tedious one, as such, I’m exploring different methods to complete the work. If none of these prove to be practical I may seek professional help.
I have scanned the document, so I can protect the original work. I have also “OCR’ed” it (that is converted the image scan into a text document that I can work with.)
The good news is that my word processor has a German Dictionary, so spelling errors (that usually result from a poor scan) are easily found. The bad news is there are lots of corrections to be made. Part of the problem is the quality of the original text; the print varies in sharpness and contrast. As well there are problems with the scanner itself; it seems to have introduced a vertical line across each page. I will rescan the work on another machine to see if the results are better.
If rescanning does not reduce the amount to be corrected, then it may turn out to be more effective and efficient to simply retype the work. There are, however, 60 pages so there is some motivation to overcome the scanning problems.
The resulting text document has two columns: the first includes the original (cleaned up / corrected) German text; the second the English translation. My German is sufficient to read the words, and I recognise many, but not enough to translate. As a result I and using an on-line translator.
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